KYIV (Reuters) – Weather conditions in May were mostly favourable for Ukrainian spring and winter crops, weather forecasters said on Tuesday.
Ukraine has almost completed 2022 spring sowing but the area is up to 30% smaller than in 2021 because of hostilities in the country’s southern and eastern regions after Russia’s invasion.
“Due to the moderate, cool temperature, despite the deficit of May precipitation, moisture consumption from the soil was moderate,” the state weather forecasting centre said in a report, adding that reserves of productive moisture in the soil under winter crops were sufficient.
Forecasters said that only in southern Odesa and Kherson regions and in some areas of the central regions, the water content deteriorated to unsatisfactory levels.
Analyst APK-Inform on Tuesday said it had increased its forecast for Ukraine’s 2022/23 grain crop to 48.3 million tonnes from 41.4 million tonnes a month earlier.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by David Goodman)
